The Event Horizon

2.1 Contact

This is possibly the most intelligent SF movie to hit our cinema screens in a long while. Intelligent because it is not campy like Mars Attacks, not high-school science like Independance Day, and not outrageous like Men In Black. It is also not technology encumbered like most out-in-space features where characters are compromised to make technology look good. It is a good yarn well-told on screen (kudos to Robert Zemeckis); it is also a movie about politics in science, about human faith and of course, about our destiny in `that infinite void'.

But that said, there are somethings amiss. The movie is based on the late Carl Sagan's book of the same name written some time ago. It is pre-X files. The allure of the SETI project is no longer there. Our fear of unknown extraterrestrial beings/their actions have been somewhat exorcised and to harbour such fear is to be still wary of the bogey-man under our beds.

The movie is intelligent because it makes one think. There are existential questions (albeit clumsily handled in the show, no thanks to the feeble role played by Matthew McConnaughy) about God's place in science (or vice versa) and the nature of one's faith. Can one deny humanity in the absence of empirical evidence? Do you believe with your eyes or rule with your mind? When will you stop questioning and begin to accept? The movie might have touched on these issues, but sadly, the scripting is just competent. Else, it would have been a powerful movie to boot.

While the movie precepts are old-fashioned, it has enough jargon and instruments to keep an engineer happy and focused. For an ex-TV engineer like me, seeing an interlaced frame signal, well, is like getting acquainted with an old-girlfriend!

Contact has enough human drama and logic to move it along competently from start to finish. The oneupmanship by the eccentric billionaire (Bill Gates next?) also added wiry skepticism to what could turn out to be an elaborate hoax afterall. But what about all that static? The truth, as Mulder will say, is out there.

reviewed by Lai Tuck Chong

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Intelligent is a word that's been overused in most reviews of Contact. But in this case, the accolades are wholly justified. Contact grapples with larger issues about life, faith, the role of religion and human nature in the best tradition of humanist SF (and I'm proud to call it an SF movie). My only complaints are that the movie is too long (could do with tighter editing), the Clinton sequences gratituous and indulgent, and the rather bland performance by Matthew McConnaughey. When he asks Ellie in Washington if she can stand leaving Earth and coming back to find everyone she knows dead and gone, I wish she'd say ``Yes. If it means leaving such insipid bozos like you.''

reviewed by Nigel Tan

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I loved the movie. I think it'll be one of the best movies this year in my opinion. (Your opinion may vary.) I identified with the lead character alot even though she is a female. I'm both an atheist (this word was not mentioned throughout the movie but that's what she is) and an astronomy buff. I'd loved to have done my degree in astronomy but pure research science isn't given enough credit for technological advances especially in Singapore. Often or not, research is directed in to areas of commercial interest.

This is also one of the few movies with astronomy in the highlight. I caught all the astronomy terms that were used in the movie. I wonder how many caught the joke when Elle was asked what was she looking for and she nonchalantly replied `LGM'. LGM - little green men.

The movie pretends to talk of a possible scenario of how humans may make contact with other intelligent life out there. From the sheer number of stars, about 100 billion, there are in this galaxy alone the possibility of life in other planets is very strong. But as to why there has been no contact yet is another story.

Rather the movie was actually about religion versus science, faith versus empirical evidence. Elle chooses not to believe in God without evidence. This puts her in opposition to 95 percent of the population of Earth who believe in some form of higher being. She was asked if she thought if the rest of the people were having some kind of mass halucination. She didn't answer it cause it would be politically incorrect state her view point in the big screen - yes they are.

During the interview, she was deliberately questioned on her religious beliefs. She knows if she doesn't give an answer they like, she'd be jeopardising her chances. If she were a religious person and if a positive answer would damage her chances, the choice would be so easy, she would not abandon her God. Elle doesn't have a God and no one to abandon if she chose to lie. Yet she did not and fails to be chosen to make the Humans' first intergalactic ambassador.

Finally, she makes contact and returns without a shred of evidence to prove her word. Now the tables are turned on her. She knows what happened is real but she cannot provide any evidence to support her. She was asked if it were possible if she halucinated the whole trip and that nothing actually took place outside of her mind. Previously she was asked to choose faith in God versus evidence of His existence. She did not choose faith. Now she is asked to choose between faith in what she knew happened versus the lack of evidence. Again, she chose evidence even though she knew the trip was for real. She chose to be true to her beliefs even when it contradicted what she knew.

The point for me was that most people, unlike Elle, will choose to stand by their faith/belies in any particular matter without any supporting evidence or even with tons of evidence against it. They will continue to do things the way 'it was always done' with out question.

I have not read the book which this movie was based upon. I have only read one of Carl Sagan's books called The Demon Haunted World. He spoke against the continual belief in various superstitions when we have better knowledge of the way world functions around us. Yet this unsupportable superstitions continue to survive by the sheer strength of people's beliefs. I agree with his argument entirely.

reviewed by Marimuthu

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